1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a communication terminal, and more particularly to message processing for a communication terminal.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Radio communications technologies have become more useful and convenient to users as more services are provided. One such service is known as Short Message Service (SMS), a multimedia service that may be provided through a communication terminal such as a mobile terminal.
SMS is a point-to-point (PTP) service used to send a relatively short message from a single sender to a single recipient. The message is composed using an application program of the communication terminal, such as an SMS editor.
In preparing an SMS message, the user typically selects from a message menu provided in the communication terminal. The SMS editor then displays a main window for composing the SMS message on a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen. Next, the user selects an option from a “language” menu displayed in the main window. Then, the SMS editor displays submenus to enable the user to select from various options such as “language”, “numbers”, “upper case characters”, “lower case characters” and “special characters”.
The user then selects from the submenus and composes the SMS message. When composing the SMS message, the user may write the message with spaces between words so that the message recipient may more easily understand the message. Once the SMS message is composed, the user presses a “send” key to send the message to the recipient. However, if the message is composed with spaces between the words, the spaces are counted as part of the number of transmittable characters. Because there is a limit on the maximum number of characters that may be sent in each message, the number of “non-space” transmittable characters is reduced by the number of “space” characters. In other words, the maximum character capacity is reduced by an amount equal to the number of spaces included in the message.
Conversely, when the user composes the message without spaces between words, the number of “non-space” transmittable characters is not reduced because there are no “space” characters. However, without spaces between the words it is difficult for the recipient to read the message.